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eclectic-mania · 1 year

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she's a killer queen

2. turn and face the strange (ch-ch-changes)

(part 1) | (read it on ao3)

Point Place, WI

July 16, 1977

12:57 AM

A pair of mismatched eyes flew open.

Jacqueline Burkhart was no stranger to waking up in the middle of the night, but the circumstances surrounding her lack of sleep this time around were definitely... weird.

The sheets stuck to her sweaty—alright, not sweaty, Jackie Burkhart didn’t sweat—skin thanks to the sweltering heat of a Wisconsin July, and she pulled them off of her as she tried to take stock of what actually woke her up.

She hadn’t dreamt, not that she could remember, and thank god for that. Her dreams nowadays were downright freaky. In them, she saw other people, people she’d never seen before, people from all sorts of backgrounds. There was a running joke between her and their friends that she hated foreigners—a sentiment her parents seriously believed, even if Jackie herself could never treat it as more than a joke, but even that joke died at the sheer love and kinship she felt for these women that she only ever met in her sleep. In some dreams she is these women, and as them, she fights monsters with deformed faces and giant fangs. Those are more like nightmares, even if she, acting as those women, always wins.

Jackie shared one such nightmare with Michael once, when he was supposed to spend the night at hers. He huffed and accused her of trying to kill the mood, complete with his trademark “Damn, Jackie,” and she never shared her dreams with him again, monster-ridden or not.

She shuddered, snuggling deeper into her bed. It’s not the first time she’s seen that... hideous creature in her brain, but tonight, now, it doesn’t bring up the same fear. No, for some reason, tonight the vision makes her... anxious. Not in a running way either; in a fighting way.

Anyway, it wasn’t the dreaming that woke her up this time. Nor was it her usual fear of sleeping alone in a big house, although it was in the back of her mind to check the locks again when she woke up in the morning. Her eyes moved across the room and, finding nothing amiss, she shook her head and relaxed again. I better not wake up again, she grumbled to herself as her eyelids drooped. I need my beauty sleep, damn it.

She remained oblivious, as her sleep went on undisturbed, of the new power thrumming in her veins.

The summer days were long and lonely when her friends were busy. Sure, Jackie could have hung out with other cheerleaders, but the girls on the team made her feel terrible, not just about herself but about everyone. She was her worst self when she tried to fit in with them, but damn it, she loved cheering. It was the one thing she did that brought her joy to her days, aside from spending time with (okay, bossing around) Michael.

She frowned. Come to think of it, she hadn’t spent much time with Michael lately, even though she went to the basement almost every day. Half the time, he wasn’t even there! Still, she was able to get closer with the rest of the basement gang, so it wasn’t a total loss. Fez loved her, Eric and Steven tolerated her, and Donna... Donna was her best friend, and she was a much better friend than anyone on the cheer team, that was damn sure. Hell, even the Formans were wonderful to be around! They were great company, better than her high school social circle and her perpetually absent parents, but that didn’t mean she didn’t miss her man.

Well, then, it was decided. Jackie would be spending the day at the Formans.

It was a normal day, just as bright and warm as the other summer days, but something was off. Come to think of it, something had been off since the night before when she’d woken up abruptly. She’d been feeling... powerful, she decided, but in the most subtle way possible. She felt an understated strength and damn it, try as she might, she just couldn’t explain it. It didn’t help that she nearly snapped her eyeliner pencil in two just by grabbing it, nor that she seemed to anticipate a car running a stop sign before it even approached the crossing.

You’re just overthinking it, she said to herself as walked over to the Forman residence, though she swore she never used to walk this fast before. Nothing’s wrong, nothing’s different, it’s all in your head.

She said it to herself enough that she believed it. And then she nearly tore the basement door right off its hinges.

Oops.

Luckily, the only person in the basement was Steven, and he barely paid attention to her on a regular day. But what about today had been regular so far? She saw his eyes widen behind his glasses as she closed the basement door, ten times gentler now after the slam she opened it with. Jackie could practically see the gears turning in his head, and she braced herself for the insults and name-calling to begin. She could hear it already: Jackie Burkhart, cheerleader freak.

Thankfully, what he actually said was nothing of the sort. “Look, whatever Kelso did, don’t take it out on the damn door, okay?”

“The door’s just falling apart,” she said, trying to hide her relief, “it wasn’t my fault, and besides, nothing happened to it. It probably just blew open with the wind. Mr. Forman should really fix that door sometime soon.”

Hyde opened his mouth to respond, but blessedly, he was interrupted by the presence of Michael Kelso himself.

Perfect, a worthy target of her frustration. “Michael, where have you been lately? I feel like you’re not around a lot nowadays.”

Michael stammered, looking between Steven and Donna and Eric, who had just come down the stairs from the kitchen. “I’ve been walking the dog. Yeah, yeah, that dog is crazy, Jackie, he needs to pee all the time.”

“Michael,” she huffed, eyes narrowing, “you don’t have a dog.”

Lies. He’s lying to you.

“Yeah, Jackie, I don’t, but, but I gotta walk it anyway because... because I got a job! Yeah, my dad won’t give me any more money for our dates and stuff, so I’m walking dogs now. Yup.”

And really, Jackie shouldn’t have let it slide that she was suspicious, but the implication that he was doing it for her was just too sweet. He was doing what her dad did, trying to provide for her, even if he disappeared from her life in the process. She couldn’t fault him for that, could she? Besides, she’d look like a total bitch if she confronted him after that.

Sure, she’d appreciate some attention sometimes, too, but... wait, was that something she wanted from Michael, or her dad?

“Well,” she sighed, smiling as she plopped onto his lap, “how about we use that date money now?”

The others in the room were watching with amusement, and their snickering as Michael stammered through some question or another did not go unnoticed by Jackie. They’re just laughing because Michael’s an idiot. That’s all. They’re not laughing at you.

This belief was cemented by the fact that Donna threw a newspaper at him, trying to hide her laughter. “Go ahead, Kelso, plan a date for Jackie.”

He still looked lost, so Jackie threw him a bone. “Michael, I want to go to the movies today.”

Eyes brightening, he looked for the movie timings in the paper.

Throughout the ensuing discussion about Smokey and the Bandit and girl movies, Jackie couldn’t fully move away from the fact that Michael was definitely lying to her. He didn’t have the scent of dog anywhere on him, unlike Mr. Wilkerson when she walked by his yard on the way here. The Wilkerson dog was sickly and not too active, but Jackie could still smell it clear as day on Mr. Wilkerson, and the closest she’d gotten to him was walking past him as he sat on his porch. So there had been no dog-walking or Jackie would’ve smelled it, like how she could smell Donna’s dollar store shampoo and the detergent Mrs. Forman used on Eric’s clothes.

When had she gotten so good at picking out scents?

The movie was a great distraction, totally uncomplicated. The Goodbye Girl was great aside from its direct parallels to Jackie’s life, but she could overlook that for Richard Dreyfuss’s insane Richard III performance. She was still giggling at the absurdity of it when Fez reached over and kissed her, with tongue.

Well, so much for uncomplicated.

It didn’t help that Michael punched Fez in the face, which meant they were all sent home. The kiss was great, maybe the best Jackie had ever had, but even that couldn’t distract from the pure fury in Jackie’s heart when she realized what exactly had happened, once she finally had the chance to reflect on it in private.

Who gave him the right to touch me?

She suddenly longed to rip Fez limb from limb, to tear his tongue out with her bare hands. A part of her suspected that she actually could do so, too, if she chose. She had that power now.

That power.

Where had it come from? Why did it manifest in her? Of course Jackie Burkhart was special, she’d be the first to tell you that, but she didn’t want to be a freak. Her mismatched eyes already made her one; because of them, she’d endured taunts of “freak” and “mutant” for the bulk of her childhood, half of them coming from her own mother. Jackie hated her eyes, and she was quickly growing to hate her newfound abilities in a similar fashion. They didn’t make her special, they made her a freak. And she refused to let anyone call her a freak any longer.

Not only that, but powers like these were dangerous. Jackie may not have been a comic book dweeb like Eric or a conspiracy nut like Steven but even she knew that people with abilities like hers were at risk of being locked up and experimented on.

Jackie didn’t want to be locked up! How would she be head cheerleader by her senior year if she was stuck in a secret government facility, being dissected?

No, she couldn’t let that happen. So Jackie did what any intelligent, rational teenage girl would do: she scribbled about it in her super-secret diary (as opposed to the regular diary she knew her parents and Michael tried to snoop in) and resolved to hide her powers from the public forever, or for however long they lasted. No superhero business for her, no sirree!

Besides, this was Point Place. Even if she wanted to use her powers for good, when would she get an opportunity to do that around here?

Across town, a couple stumbled into an alley next to a bar. The blond man pushed the woman into the brick wall of the bar, relishing in the delighted groan that ripped from her throat.

“Randy,” she mewled, half-laughing, “yeah, baby, just like that, just—”

The next thing to rip from her throat was her blood, and he happily guzzled it, letting her collapse against the wall once she was drained.

Randy gazed down at her, sated. It would’ve been smarter to turn her, but he was hungry, and who wanted to change the world on an empty stomach? No matter, he’d turn the next one, maybe one of the other barflies in the pub he’d just walked out of. This town seemed better than any to enact his plan, after all. Yeah, he grinned to himself, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Point Place’ll be just fine.

#mine #my fics #she's a killer/queen #killer/queen #that 70s show #t7s #jackie burkhart #jackie x hyde #that 70's show fanfiction #btvs universe #buffy the vampire slayer #vampire #fanfiction #fanfic

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